The Wisconsin Library Association has warned libraries about the new federal Patriot Act, leading some to purge circulation records to protect privacy, and others to begin warning patrons about the law's effects.
The warning came last spring in the form of a sample policy for the association's member libraries to use to "protect against the unwarranted invasion of the personal privacy of library users." In recent months, the association has surveyed its members on what actions they've taken.
At the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay's Cofrin Library, workers regularly delete records of requests for books or other material once those transactions are completed.
"If we had kept those patron records and if we were visited by the FBI," said Library Director Leanne Hansen, "then they would have been able to look at all those records. They would have had access to all patron records, not just one individual's."
Hansen said she and her staff do not oppose fighting terrorism, which is the professed purpose of the Patriot Act. They believe, however, that the federal law wrongly gives the FBI authority to peruse people's library records.
"We do believe in people's privacy in their use of the library," she said.
Mark Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman in Washington, D.C., said last week that to get a search warrant under the Patriot Act, the FBI must show evidence to a federal judge that the records being sought would involve international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, which would be foreign spying.
"The FBI," he said, "is prohibited from conducting investigations of U.S. citizens solely on the basis of activities based on the First Amendment. We can't go to the library and say, 'We want to see all the records.' "
He also said the libraries were not breaking any federal law by destroying their circulation records "under the misguided notion that the FBI is monitoring what people are reading. Nobody really cares."
But, he said, libraries could be destroying records that grand juries have the right to subpoena as evidence for other crimes, such as child pornography.
Last month, Attorney General John Ashcroft said the FBI had not yet obtained any library records, and that still is the case, Corallo said.
"We're telling libraries to consult their local legal counsels, review their policies and know what their privacy and record retention policies are," said Peter Gilbert, state library association president and a reference librarian at Lawrence University in Appleton.
Meanwhile, the library association is suggesting that its members ask: "Do you have a good reason to keep the records that you are keeping? If you don't, get rid of them."
The Beloit Public Library has posted warnings that say: "Although the Beloit Public Library makes every effort to protect your privacy, under the federal USA Patriot Act, records of the books and other materials you borrow from this library may be obtained by federal agents. That federal law prohibits library workers from informing you if federal agents have obtained records about you."
Lynda Moon, the Beloit Library Board president, said her board has always had a policy that "it was essential that citizens be able to read and explore ideas freely without fear of surveillance." However, because of the fight on terrorism, things have changed.
If an FBI agent arrived with a search warrant, she said, "We would comply with the law as long as they had the proper order from the government."
Moon said her son had been very interested in Soviet aircraft when he was in junior and senior high schools. He also took out books on rocket design, built a rocket with his father and launched it.
"If somebody from the FBI had come to find out why he was getting books on rocket design," she said, "it would have disturbed me."
In July, the Rhinelander District Library Board voted unanimously to endorse two resolutions that say, in part, "that sections of the USA Patriot Act are a present danger to the constitutional rights and privacy rights of library users."
The Oscar Grady Library in Saukville also may join the fight. The Saukville Library Board last week asked Village Attorney Gerald Antoine to review a sample policy outline, suggested by the state library association, on the privacy of library records and library use.
It recommends that library staffers ask FBI agents to wait to search until the library's attorney arrives to examine the search warrant to be certain it is proper.
The policy also says that the staffers should cooperate with the search "to ensure that only the records identified in the warrant are produced, and that no other users' records are disclosed."
The Saukville Library Board is considering adopting the outline, to alert library staff and board members "as to what situations may arise," board President Joann Wiesner said.
In the past, she said, librarians have been protective of patrons' rights to pursue information and "perceived the (Patriot) act as an attack on the privacy of our patrons."
Julie Anne Chase, director of the Dane County Library Service in Madison, said historical records of materials checked out by patrons are not kept by her system or the LINK Exchange Network, a consortium of 40-some libraries in a seven-county area in central Wisconsin.
What her system has done since August, however, is to provide patrons with a brochure and a Web page that explains that policy.
"It's not so much that we changed our practice. It's just that we have taken more care in letting patrons know what our policy is," Chase said.
Dan Benson of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.
Source: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=175277